


We won, Mr. Stark

by elenath_s



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Big Brother Harley, Character Death Fix, F/M, Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, Not Beta Read, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Tony Stark Acting as Harley Keener's Paternal Figure, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-10 09:12:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18657409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elenath_s/pseuds/elenath_s
Summary: Post Final Battle in Endgame.





	We won, Mr. Stark

**Author's Note:**

> So I needed to fix the absolute bullshit that was my son being murdered. I would have liked to save Natasha as well, but I have no idea how I'd do that, so unfortunately she stays dead. Sorry. But at least I give her funeral, cause Marvel apparently didn't care enough to do that.  
> Also, I'm lowkey salty Harley wasn't involved more, cause he's my child, and I really wanted the rumors about him being Iron Lad to be true.  
> I wrote this the night of watching Endgame and then I revised it a little, but I don't have a beta reader, so any grammatical mistakes and problems with sentence structure are on me.

Tony woke up to FRIDAY screaming at him to wake the hell up already. His whole body ached, his lungs struggled to take in oxygen, and all he could hear was a loud ringing and the thundering of his own heartbeat. His mind swam and his vision faded in and out of focus as he dragged himself up out of the grasp of unconsciousness. As the fog in his mind cleared a little, so did his swirling vision, the world around him slowly coming into focus as he stared up at the blotted out sky. The Compound was still carnage, fires burning bright all over the place and dirt and grime kicked up into the air, making everything hazy. There was a _swishing_ noise he vaguely recognised, but it was drowned out by the other voices on the comms. He could hear Steve breathing heavily, and there was chatter from someone else that he thought he recognised though he couldn’t be sure, but there was one voice that sent a chill down Tony’s spine. The voice, right along with FRIDAY’s was demanding he get up because, “ _Goddammit, Dad, why didn’t you just fucking call_?” and Tony felt a bone deep panic at the thought of his eldest out on the battlefield too.

“ _Dad? Dad, you better wake the fuck up and not be dead, cause I swear to god if you are, imma drag you out of the afterlife just to kill you myself_ ,” Harley’s voice crackled over the comms, his harsh words doing nothing to hide his terror. “ _Dad? Dad,_ **_please_ **.”

Tony coughed.

“I’m here, Harley, I’m okay,” Tony replied, peeling himself off the ground from where Mjolnir had flattened him. His voice was rough and he was still having trouble seeing straight, but Harley didn’t need to know that.

There was the sound of repulsors approaching and the Iron Lad armour came hurtling out of nowhere and landed in front of Tony, the face plate melting away as Harley reached down to help Tony off the ground. The way that they were standing now meant that Harley had placed himself directly in between Tony and Thanos, and Tony wanted to shove his eldest out of the way, to protect him, but Harley would never have stood for that and wouldn’t even let Tony look at Thanos.

Now that he was standing, Tony looked around himself and realised where he recognised the _swishing_ from. Brilliant amber portals opened all around them, spitting out hundreds, no, **thousands** , of reinforcements, and Tony let his shoulders sag in relief. He saw Pepper land a little ways away in the Rescue armour, and he couldn’t help the tingle of pride that shivered its way down his spine. He wouldn’t be alone this time, and maybe that didn’t quell the panic in his chest at both Harley and Pepper being present for the biggest fight in history, but it reassured him that there would, at the very least, be someone else looking out for them both.

The fighting picked up after that, Harley vanishing off somewhere in the fray, but remaining in contact over the comms. Every once in a while, Tony would see a flash of the repulsors and a hoard of outriders would go hurtling into the sky, Harley’s whoop of satisfaction echoing over the comms as he shot them as far into the sky as he could. Amongst the chaos of the battle and trying very hard not to die, pride built up in his chest at how much Harley had progressed in the armour over the many years since Tony had relented to Harley’s begging and let him try on the suit. Tony wondered if he’d ever get the chance to be there when Harley and Peter inevitably met. He hoped he would.

His thought process was jerked to a stop as he was slammed backwards and into another pile of debris. The outrider that had thrown him was gaining on him quickly, but at the last second was halted mid air and was hurled back the way it had come by a lanky figure and a thin line of spider silk.

Tony couldn’t even begin to form a coherent word before Peter was leaping down from his perch to help him off the ground, his helmet melting away, his hair fluffing up and his mouth already open and ready to go with the chatter.

“Hey!” Peter called out, and it took all of Tony’s willpower to not just break down in the middle of a fight to sob, because he never thought he’d hear Peter’s voice again, not out in the open and organic, instead of all those voice mails that Tony had saved over their time together. “Holy cow! You **will not** believe what’s been going on! Do you remember how we were in space? And I got all dusty? I thought I must have passed out, right, cause I woke up, and you were gone! But Doctor Strange was there, right? He was like, ‘ _I_ _t’s been five years, c’mon, they need us!_ ’ And then he started doing the yellow sparkly thing that he does all the time -”

Tony cut Peter’s words off by putting a hand on the teen’s shoulder and dragging him in for a hug. Peter’s arms were lax at his sides for a moment, before they moved upwards, hovering a little awkwardly, then finally resting against Tony’s shoulder blades. Tony held the boy tight, clinging to him in an attempt to scrub away the memory of the last time they had been this close, when they had been on a strange planet, so far from home, tears down both their faces, as Peter had faded to nothing in Tony’s grasp.

Peter patted him a little gently, and stuttered out, “Huh, this - this is nice.”

There was a curse and then Harley was landing beside them, his helmet melting away just enough to see him glaring at them.

“This is all very touching, but we’re in the middle of a war zone, so how’s about we vamoose out of the direct line of fire,” Harley snapped, gesturing back away from the lake before his helmet covered his head again and he was taking off into the air toward a chitauri leviathan.

Tony wanted to snap at him, to remind him that he had a brother that he had yet to meet, but then something exploded off to their right and Tony followed his eldest away from where all the heavy hitters seemed to be having fun, ready to assist his son in taking down the behemoth of a creature. As Tony fired at the leviathan with everything he had, he caught sight of Peter swinging off, kicking an outrider in the face before disappearing into the mass of writhing bodies fighting for control.

Scott and his friend? Girlfriend? Partner? had a plan, to get the Infinity Stones back to where they belonged and thus away from Thanos, and it turned into a mass game of keep away as the jewelled gauntlet was sprinted across the battlefield by Clint, who then passed it to T’Challa. Tony lost track of it after that, before he heard Peter shout out a victorious, “I’ve got it!” and saw the boy launch himself up and over the heads of most of the fighters, friends and foe alike.

It was then that the huge ship up above let loose a hailstorm of missiles, the ground upon which they landed exploding in a shower of fire and dirt and death. Tony felt something in his chest seize up as he heard both Peter and Harley cry out.

Just as suddenly as the shower of death began, it ended. The turrets along the underside of the ship shifted to point upwards at the clouds and opened fire.

“FRIDAY, what’re they shootin’ at?” Tony asked, scanning the battlefield as FRIDAY scanned the sky. Harley was in the process of using one of the outriders as a punching bag, seemingly having adjusted quickly from having to shield himself to having to defend himself. Tony couldn’t see Peter, but the younger boy was somewhere off to Tony’s right, and his vitals was good all things considered, so he let both boys be for a moment.

“ _Something just came through the upper atmosphere_ ,” FRIDAY announced, and Tony watched in terrified awe as Carol came hurtling through the clouds in a flaming ball of righteous fury and punched right through the side of the ship. Carol zig-zagged her way through the ship until it was nothing but wreckage, watching in satisfaction as it plummeted from the sky.

As the battle started up again, Tony heard Peter hand the gauntlet over to Carol before seemingly backing out of the fight, too dazed and disorientated from the missile shower to be of any help.

Tony monitored both Harley and Peter as the battle raged on, but he lost them again when Scott’s van exploded somewhere off to Tony’s right. Spotting the gauntlet laying defenceless on the ground a little way off, Tony launched himself towards it, tackling Thanos to the ground as the titan made a grab for it. It became an intense game of hot potato, keeping the gauntlet moving between Tony, Thor and Carol to keep it away from Thanos.

As Thor was batted aside and Thanos put the gauntlet on, Carol hurled herself at the titan and took hold of the gauntlet in an attempt to stop Thanos from closing his fist. There was a moment of possibly manic hilarity when Thanos tried to headbutt her, but Carol didn’t even flinch, glaring up at the murderous, purple, fuck, before pushing back with all her strength and sending Thanos crashing to his knees. Something shifted that Tony couldn’t see and Carol was tossed to the side and into a pile of debris. In that moment, Tony caught sight of Stephen, who was still trapped by the remanence of the lake shore, keeping all the water back to stop them all from drowning. The sorcerer held up a single finger with a shaking hand.

A thousand feelings crashed into him all at once. Terror, heartbreak, longing, and too many other things to name swirled in his mind in a fraction of a second. If he did this, he’d never see Morgan grow up, he’d never see Harley graduate MIT, he’d never see Peter graduate high school. He’d have none of that… but at least they would live to get to reach those milestones.

Prompted into action and determined to win, Tony launched himself back at Thanos. Not bothering to try to take the gauntlet from him, Tony grabbed each of the Stones and rolled away from Thanos.

Thanos turned to Tony, not noticing the lack of jewels in his gauntlet and looking triumphant. He held his thumb and middle finger together as he said, “I am inevitable,” and snapped his fingers… except nothing happened as Tony arranged the Stones on his own gauntlet.

“Yeah?” Tony asked, shifting so that he was kneeling on the ground, the Infinity Stones at the ready and visible. His helmet melted away so that Thanos could see his face, could know that **Tony fucking Stark** was the man that ended him. Filling his mind of the image of all of Thanos’ forces turning to dust and there finally being peace, Tony replied, “And I am Iron Man.”

Tony snapped his fingers and everything went black.

* * *

As the remaining chitauri and outriders turned to dust, Peter swung through the debris, desperately searching for Tony amongst the wreckage. He saw Rhodey touch down off to the right, and Peter swung down next to him, his heart climbing up into his throat and beating a thousand miles a second as he took in the crumpled and barely breathing form of his mentor.

“We won, Mr. Stark,” Peter murmured, crouching down in front of Tony and gently taking hold of the man’s biceps as his helmet melted away. “We won, Mr. Stark.” Peter couldn’t help the tears that flowed freely down his cheeks, leaving clear tracks in the grime that somehow had still managed to find its way to his face despite the helmet. “We won. You did it, Sir, you did it.” Pepper had landed next to him at some point, and she gently guided him up and towards Rhodey, who put a hand on his shoulder as he cried into his arm in a vain attempt to muffle his sobs.

There was the roar of repulsors as Pepper crouched down next to Tony, and the kid from earlier, who’s name was still a mystery to Peter, landed next to them.

“Dad!” The boy’s voice called out before he too was crouching by Tony’s side and getting all up in his space. “Dad, don’t you dare fucking die, that shit isn’t allowed.”

Peter wanted to shove the boy away, tell him to give Tony some space, he was - he shouldn’t be crowded right now, it wasn’t fair, but the boy was also crying, tears streaming down his cheeks as he fumbled with something in his suit, and the boy had called Tony ‘Dad’. Thor staggered over from where he had collapsed, but stayed at a distance, seemingly unsure if he was allowed to approach or if this was a moment to be shared with family only. Did Peter count as family then, he wondered? That thought just made Peter cry all the harder, and he almost missed what Tony’s son did next.

The boy brandished what looked like a shimmering red epipen in one hand as he scrubbed at his face with the other before saying, “I’m sorry, Dad, this’ll hurt, but I’m not fucking losing you too.”

There was a moment where Peter scrabbled to figure out what he meant, his mind a fog of adrenalin and grief and panic as he tried to understand the words that were falling from the other boy’s lips too fast for him to comprehend.

Suddenly, the boy rammed the epipen into Tony’s leg and the man seized up, his mouth open as if to scream but no sound coming out as fiery red lights danced up his veins from the puncture point.

Peter reacted impulsively, shoving the other boy away from Tony as quickly as he could, his eyes wide and panicked as he watched the orange lights below Tony’s skin dance up and across his body, simmering under the twisted and flaking skin of his right side.

“Harley, was that what I think it was?” Rhodey asked, his voice not giving away an emotion as Pepper pulled Peter away from the boy, Harley, and held him close.

“Damn fucking right it was,” Harley snapped, rolling his shoulders back as he glared at Peter, his narrowed, steely blue eyes meeting Peter’s round, brown ones challengingly. “I’m not losing him too.” Harley paused, listening to something, probably the AI in his suit, before he addressed the group. “He’s stable, but we gotta get him somewhere comfy.”

“Go, take him home, I’ll help coordinate everything here and meet you,” Pepper replied, standing with her back a little straighter and a determined look on her face. “Get Doctor Strange to portal you there.”

Harley nodded, and gently, he scooped Tony into his arms and was off, heading for Doctor Strange. The sorcerer had seemingly recruited a few of his wizard friends in building a dam to keep the water in the original lake basin and was now free to assist everyone else. Harley and Doctor Strange shared a few words before the man was nodding and opening a portal, through which Harley and Tony disappeared.

Rhodey then headed off to see what he could do to help with everyone, and Pepper told Peter to go home and see May, and that they would be in touch, she promised. Peter nodded numbly and did as he was told. Doctor Strange squeezed his shoulder reassuringly before sending him through his own portal to Queens.

Everything looked the same, but at the same time, everything seemed so different. The streets were full of people searching for their loved ones, and Peter was immensely glad he was wearing the helmet. He headed towards his apartment building, his pace picking up until he was running up the stairs, taking them two at a time until he made it to the door.

Suddenly, standing in front of his home, he felt fear and anticipation building in his gut. He wasn’t sure if he should knock on the door or not; he had been away for five years now, and he didn’t know what the protocol for that was for that. Would May be angry at him? He had left the school bus after all, and maybe if he had stayed, he would have dusted here, with her, and not a billion miles from home. He didn’t know which one would be worse, and he had no idea how May would react when they reunited.

Hesitantly, he knocked on the door before heading into the apartment.

“May?” Peter called out, closing the door and letting the suit melt away into the housing unit that rested in between his shoulder blades. “May, you home?”

When Peter didn’t get a reply, he rushed into the bathroom to have maybe the quickest shower he had ever had, before heading into his room to get changed.

At some point between getting his trousers on and trying to find a shirt, it hit him that May hadn’t changed anything about his room at all. Sure, she had tidied up a little, but everything was exactly where he had left it. Thinking about her, living all on her own for **five years** , holding onto his memory even when she thought there was no way to bring him back, when to him, it had barely been a few minutes, filled his mind and suddenly he couldn’t breathe, his thoughts swirling in and out of his mind too fast for him to calm them, accompanied by the panic and lack of knowledge about Tony’s fate. His heart jack hammered in his chest so hard he was scared it would burst from his chest, and his ears roared with his blood flow.

That is how May found him, ten minutes later, curled into the corner of his bedroom, his shirt discarded against the floor as he struggled to breath, tears falling down his cheeks in a seemingly never ending cascade.

Seeing May again after Titan and the battle at what remained of the Compound, all Peter could do was latch onto her and cry as she rocked them both from side to side and cried with him.

* * *

 Natasha’s funeral was a quiet thing.

She hadn’t had any family outside of the team, so they all gathered at the lake by Tony’s house to send her off. Harley stood with Pepper and Rhodey, Morgan’s little hand clasped tightly in his own as she stayed quiet. She hadn’t known Natasha, not really, and she had no memories of the woman to mourn, no relationship lost, but she stayed quiet nevertheless because she had always been kind and intelligent, and she knew the people around her were suffering. Harley hadn’t really known her either. He hadn’t known her before the Decimation, and he didn’t really get to know her after. Unlike Tony, Harley was content to hold a grudge for the rest of his life, and he still couldn’t wrap his head around the idea that she would turn on him mid battle, all those years ago. Despite his bitterness though, he mourned, because he knew that she had been a friend to Tony, even after everything, and she had tried to hold the world together when everyone else tried to let go. Her sacrifice had made Tony’s possible, and for that, Harley would always be grateful and respectful, because whether he liked her or not, respect was the bare minimum of what she deserved.

Steve and his group were all clustered together, and they were all crying. Clint and Wanda were standing side by side, and though the young woman wasn’t crying, she was clearly supportive of her friend as Clint clutched tightly to both her hand and the hand of his wife as he wept. Thor was up on the porch, his wide shoulders hunched inwards and his hands clasped tightly in front of him as he rested his elbows on his knees. Bruce was standing with Valkyrie, who was only there to support her friends, and she glanced back at Thor every once in a while in worry. Peter Parker was there too, with his Aunt May, who Harley had met a handful of times over the last five years and liked. Peter wasn’t crying, but it was clear he had been.

When the funeral was over, Harley picked Morgan up and they went inside. Wandering through the corridors, Harley gently pushed open the door to his father’s room and sat down heavily in the little wicker loveseat next to the bed.

At first it was quiet, nothing but the sounds of breathing and the medical equipment in the room doing their jobs, but after a while, Harley could hear people whisper-yelling outside the door. Morgan had clambered out of his arms and curled up against his side, her tiny little face pressed against his thigh as her fingers clutched at the fabric of his dress pants. He grabbed his StarkPad off the bedside table with one hand and began going through the class work he’d missed over the last couple of days. He’d already called his mum and Abbie, gave them directions to get to the lake house and told them both to meet him there. He tried very valiantly but in vain not to cry, Morgan sitting up to pat his head reassuringly before curling up again. His mum had cried when he told her he’d actually ended up going to MIT, getting in with the best scores and staying top of his class, even though he had been planning to go to CalTech way back when, because it was closer to Tony and Morgan and he needed to be needed.

There was a little window on the far wall, and the curtains were drawn about half way, to let some light shine onto the bed but not so much that it was overwhelming. The heart monitor and a bunch of other machines Harley couldn’t name were all crammed into the space between the bed and the far wall, that had previously been occupied by a nightstand. The beeping of the heart monitor was still as steady as the day they had attached Tony to it, several days prior, and though Harley hated the noise, it also soothed him, reminded him that just because his father may look like a corpse, he was actually still alive and was well on the way to healing. Extremis was working slower than Harley had hoped, but at least it was working. It was the new formula Tony had come up with, all those years ago, stabilising it and removing fire breathing from the equation. It still healed incredibly powerfully, and was working away at the radiation poisoning and the burns and decay along Tony’s right side, but it was still unsettling to see Tony so still.

Harley turned away from the resting form of his father, tucked lovingly under the covers by Pepper, so that he could hear what was happening in the corridor more clearly. Maybe the topic of conversation would have changed by now? No such luck, Pepper was still trying to talk a handful of the Avengers, who were not currently still mourning by the lake, from freaking right the fuck out, not just about Harley, who they still hadn’t actually met, but also about what Harley had injected Tony with at the end of the battle. Morgan shifted a little at his movement so he settled back down in the loveseat he had hauled in for himself and his youngest sister some time during the first day. She had seemingly gone to sleep at some point since his phone call with his mother and was snoring quietly against his thigh.

It was probably a little concerning that Harley didn’t even react to a teenaged boy climbing in through the outside window, but alas. Peter Parker crawled his skinny ass through the window that shouldn’t have been openable from the outside and dropped down quietly to the floor.

“What did you jab him with?” Peter asked, after a long while of alternating between staring at Tony and staring at Harley.

“New Extremis formula.” Harley shrugged, putting his StarkPad down and gently tying little braids into Morgan’s hair the way he remembered she liked.

“And it’ll heal him?” Peter asked, shuffling closer and peeking down at Tony with worried eyes.

“Yep,” Harley replied, popping the ‘p’ as his hands stilled and he looked up at Peter properly for the first time since the younger boy entered the room. Peter’s skin was pale and his eyes were still red and puffy, but nowhere near as bad as they had been the last time Harley had seen him, which had been when Tony was on his veritable death bed in the middle of the wreckage of the Compound. His suit was rumpled, though Harley was pretty sure that it wasn’t climbing in through the window that had creased it so badly. Harley rolled his eyes. “Extremis is just working slower than normal cause of how much damage there is, but he’ll be just fine when it’s finished with him.” Harley met Peter’s eyes with a smirk. “I once saw a lady grow back her entire arm with this stuff.”

Peter narrowed his eyes at Harley, as if he didn’t believe him (which was preposterous, Harley was the image of innocence), before he looked back down at Tony with a new, hopeful light shining in his eyes.

“So he’ll really be okay?” Peter asked, his hands twitching by his sides, as if he longed to reach out, to hold on to Tony, but wasn’t sure if he was allowed to. “That isn’t just something the adults are saying?”

Harley laughed, being mindful not to jostle Morgan as he did so. “I’m an adult too, you know?” At Peter’s affronted look, Harley nodded. “Yep, I’m twenty-two.” Harley’s smirk melted into something softer, and he said, “But really, he will get better, I promise.”

Peter nodded again, before gently scooping Morgan up so that he could sit down, laying her down again so that she was draped over both their laps.

Eventually the whisper-yelling from the corridor died down, and the steady beeping of the heart monitor was all that could be heard, except for the gentle exhale and inhale of breath that barely echoed in the small room.

Peter had to go home eventually, May coming to get him and to leave a bouquet of sunflowers for Tony. Peter looked conflicted for a moment before giving Harley an awkward hug over the still sleeping Morgan, promising he’d come back as soon as he could, before he was being ushered out the door by his aunt. Harley didn’t wait that much longer before taking Morgan downstairs to feed her. Pepper was sitting in the living room, staring at the fireplace as she played with her wedding band.

“Hey, Pepper,” Harley greeted, wandering over to her as Morgan absolutely demolished the bowl of pasta Harley had given her.

“Hey Harley,” Pepper replied, her tone soft as she looked up at him. “Thanks for looking after Morgan for me the last couple of days.”

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” Harley replied, flopping down on the couch next to her. “She’s my little sister, it’s basically my job. Besides, you’ve really stepped up, keeping everything as organised as possible.”

“Still, thank you.”

They sat in silence for a little while before Morgan called out that she had finished her pasta.

“I’d better get the little demon off to bed, you gonna be okay?” Harley asked, standing up and putting a reassuring hand on Pepper’s shoulder. Pepper looked up at him with a small smile and nodded. “Okay then, good night.”

“Good night, Harley,” Pepper replied, turning to follow the young man with her eyes as he tidied up the kitchen and hauled Morgan up against his chest. “I’ll come and say good night when you’re in bed, darling.”

“Okay, Mama!” Morgan called back as Harley took her up the stairs.

Quickly, Harley wrangled the four (“and a half, Harley! Four and a half!”) year old into her pyjamas and into the bathroom to brush her teeth, before taking her back to her bedroom.

“Harley, when’s Dad gonna wake up?” Morgan asked, her wide brown eyes staring up at him as he plonked her into bed and pulled her duvet right up to her chin.

“I dunno, Morgan, but it shouldn’t be too much longer now,” Harley reassured, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “I promise.”

“Tell me a story?” Morgan asked, pulling perhaps the cutest and most manipulative puppy face that Harley had ever seen.

“What do you wanna hear then?” Harley asked shifting so that he was sitting on her bed and looking down at her.

Morgan paused, curling her little hands in her duvet for a moment before a determined look came over her face.

“Tell me about Iron Man,” she said, squirming to sit upright in bed.

“I’ll do you one better,” Harley replied, wrestling her back down as she giggled. “I’ll tell you the story about the bravest, bestest hero ever.” He gave her another kiss as she looked like she was about to argue with him. “His name is Tony Stark.”


End file.
